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Bangles for BIG Girls...Bangles for PETITE Girls.... Bangles for AVERAGE Girls!

Add a touch of colour to your outfits with these fun and colourful resin bangles, sized to suit girls of all sizes. Magnetic clasps make these ideal for girls who find it hard to get a traditional bangle on their wrist. And they're available in a range of colours with different focals. Check them out in the Resin Jewellery Shop!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Remember the suitcase bonbonniere I showed you a couple of weeks back? Well at last, they're finished.... all 50 plus of them. And in plenty of time to pack them ready for the trip to Adelaide!

Well actually, they weren’t quite finished because they still needed to be filled with some of my Dad's favourite things: licorice allsorts and a jigsaw puzzle thank you note. And that couldn’t be done until after a visit to the Central Market to find the best licorice allsorts in town.

So which will it be: the traditional striped and layered allsorts?

Or the less traditional but very licoricy chunky allsorts?

Hmmm.... it was no competition really. The chunky ones are Dad's favourite so chunky ones it will be.

As soon as I got into Adelaide on Friday morning, I headed straight to the markets in the city and made a beeline to Blackeby’s sweets stall where I bought a whopping 1.25kg of the chunky licorice allsorts. Yes, you read that right – 1.25 kilograms! That’s 2½ lbs in case you're not familiar with the metric system.

All that was left to do was bag the licorice allsorts and add the thank you note (which I'd cut into a jigsaw puzzle with a Cuttlebug die). And to complete them I wrapped them with two strips of satin ribbon and glued on some studs.

They were certainly a talking point at the party as all the guests reminisced about the newspaper printed onto the boxes. Using the paper from the day Dad was born was a real hit!

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I taste tested one of each colour licorice allsort just to make sure that they tasted alright! Yumm!

Friday, August 26, 2011

Have you noticed these strange looking square bar codes that are beginning to pop up everywhere? I've seen them on T shirts, business cards, product labels, and bill boards. Gosh, there's even one in the sidebar on my blog!

QR stands for Quick Response and the technology has been around for about 15 years but its use is only just beginning to gain popularity.

QR codes are big in Asia where they were developed but the rest of the world is just beginning to use the technology. You’ll soon see QR codes everywhere as companies realise how useful they can be.

These barcodes can be encoded with all sorts of useful information such as product information, a website URL or even a video. You need to have a smart phone to be able to read the code which will then provide you with whatever information has been encoded to it.

So, how do you use a QR code reader?

Firstly, download a free QR code reader for your smart phone. I use this one from i-nigma which has versions for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry, or go to your app store and download the one that you like. Open the app and then line up the QR code. The code reader will scan the QR code and then provide you with whatever information has been encoded to it.

So now that you’re armed with a smart phone and a code reader, you’re ready to check out what they can do for you.

Here’s a couple of examples to get you started.

The QR code at the top of this post will take you to my website. No need to type in a lengthy URL - the code reader will take you directly to the home page.

Visit the Beadalon website and scan the code for product information. You'll soon see the barcodes appearing on all their product packaging so you'll be able to scan the packaging in store to find out more information about the product.

Now that you know what a QR code is you'll start noticing them everywhere you look. You might even notice some coloured ones that have triangle shapes inside the squares. These are the Microsoft Tag version but that's a whole other story!

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words..... but a bad picture often doesn't tell a story at all.

I use a point and click camera for the photos on my blog and it does a pretty good job without me needing a lot of photographic skills. Over time I have learned to use a lot of the settings on my camera to improve my photos even more and I've also developed some Photoshop skills to help fix the less than perfect photos.

But when I'm photographing my resin pieces, I usually have trouble getting the camera to focus on the surface of the resin. The autofocus function can't work out where to focus on such a non contrasting subject so it doesn't focus on anything at all and you get a result like this: But there's a really simple solution: get the camera to lock focus onto another object in the photo that is the same distance away from the lens. Here's what I mean.

Place an object on the surface where you want the camera to focus. Here, I'm resting a toothpick against the face of the bangle. Now, hold the shutter button down half way so that the lens focuses on that object. Keep holding it down but don't take the photo just yet. You can see the camera has now focused on the toothpick right in the centre of the frame.Remove the object and fully depress the button to take the photo. Voilà! A perfectly focused photo.
I wish I'd learned this trick when I first started working with resin - it would have saved me such a lot of effort. I used to take hundreds of photos until I got one that was OK. Now, I know it's just a matter of getting the lens to lock focus and the camera will do all the work.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Making my own beads out of Friendly Plastic and Opals Embossing enamels is something I love to do. But because they're made on bamboo skewers, they have really big bead holes and getting them to sit nicely on the stringing material without wobbling is a challenge. But it's not a problem restricted to my handmade mixed media beads.
With the popularity of lampwork beads and pandora-inspired beads you're bound to have come across this problem yourself, so here's a list of ideas that should help you centre those beads on your stringing material so that they sit nicely instead of wobbling around.

Insert a bugle bead or seed beads inside the bead and thread the eye pin straight through the middle. You can use bead caps to hide the bugle bead if it's showing.

Earring stoppers for earring wires. They fit well inside some glass cane beads..........but need trimming to fit inside others. Earring stops are made from a fairly soft plastic and they can be trimmed easily with a pair of scissors to fit snugly inside the bead if need be.

Use polymer clay to fill the hole if the bead is glass, slide in an eye pin and then bake it. If your beads are plastic and won't take the heat of an oven, consider an airdrying clay that has minimal shrinkage when it dries. Apoxie Sculpt is another alternative - it's a two part resin putty that cures without the need for baking and it doesn't shrink when it cures.

Place a bicone bead on the eye pin, then the large holed bead and then another bicone bead (one end of each bicone should fit snuggly inside the bead, holding the bead firmly in place). In time, the bicone will chip away with wear so it's not really a long term solution.

This is a variation of number 5. Insert a small metal bell-shaped cap into the bead hole, upside down.

Purchase commercial bead aligners such as those from TierraCast. They fit snugly inside the ends of pandora-style beads.

And if none of these ideas is the solution you're looking for, you could always consider using a thicker stringing material such as leather cord or rat tail or even a bunch of fibres.

Monday, August 22, 2011

It seems I am in a very blue / black / brown mood at the moment..... these are the bangles I cast in the bangle and ring workshops over the weekend.Today I want to spotlight the two cuffs in that pile.

I was disappointed with both of them when I pulled them from the mould; the tortoiseshell one was dull and lifeless and the marbling in the blue one was very mottled and not really marbled at all.

I hadn't achieved the look I was after in either of them. But I could see a way to improve them both and it just involved a little bit of elbow grease. These two cuffs are going to get two very different looks.... high gloss for the tortoiseshell cuff and frosted for the icy blue one.
Let's look at the tortoiseshell one first.
This was cast with amber resin and marbled with brown and black pigments. It was rather dull and lifeless when it came out of the mould but it had some great black veins of pigment swirling through it. There's definite potential here so I gave it the "Glossy, Glossier, Glossiest" treatment - 9 grades of sandpaper followed by a final buffing.

Look at how the polishing treatment has brought out the colour!
This is a bangle that definitely looks better glossy than matt!

The blue bangle on the other hand is a different kettle of fish.

The colour of this was very cool and it reminded me of sea glass so I decided to give it the frosted look to completely disguise the mottled marbling. This effect is much easier to achieve than the glossy look because you only need a couple of grades of course sandpaper.

The before photo hasn't picked up the translucency or the marbling of this bangle but you can see it's a little bit mottled.After sanding it with a couple of grades of course sandpaper, it has disguised the mottling and given it a lovely frosted surface. It's a great improvement on the original look!
So glossy works for some bangles and frosted works for others. But how do you know whether to buff to a high polish or not?

Well I have a little trick that I use which helps me decide. Hold the bangle under water and then lift it out. How it looks whilst it still has water on it is a really good indication of how it will look if it's buffed. So if you like it, then buff it; if you don't, then leave it be.

I had planned to show you some really cool bracelets today.... bracelets made from old recycled toothbrushes. I came across a tutorial on All Free Beaded Jewellery last week and I thought I just have to try this. It looks so easy to do and it packs a real punch! You've just got to check out the tutorial.

But, things have been going haywire in the kitchen today. Tonight, the microwave (just out of warranty) gave up the ghost whilst I was steaming the potatoes for dinner. Which brings me to the first pic. The microwave just didn't seem to be cooking the spuds so I swapped the microwave for the stove top and promptly forgot to add water and here's the result of that little oversight....... Burnt offerings!The saucepan is a bit worse for wear but it will live to cook another meal. But this one below? Well, I'm not so sure!
See that black gap? That's not supposed to be there. The bottom of the pan is beginning to peel away from the pot.

And how did this come about? Well, I was trying out the toothbrush bracelet tutorial and the instructions said to boil the water. So I did..... I boiled it and I boiled it and then I boiled it some more and this is the result!

And the toothbrush..... well, that wasn't so successful either!I think today is one of those days when I should have just stayed out of the kitchen.

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Colourful resin bracelet with a sparkly magnetic clasp. Now available in my Resin Jewellery Shop.

These stylish bracelets feature a selection of crystal focals and silver beads and have a strong, crystal-encrusted magnetic clasp, making them perfect for the girl who can't get a regular bangle over her knuckles. They also come in larges sizes for girls with bigger wrists.